ix EFFECTS OF FORMER DISCOVERIES 131 



their capacities and education, should have been onlookers in 

 such a controversy, awaiting the issues of the conflict while 

 the lists are being fought out by the trained knights, have 

 rushed into the fray, and by their unskilful interposition have 

 only confused the issues, casting about dust instead of light. 

 In the hope of clearing away some of this dust the present 

 discussion has been decided upon. 



It is self-evident that a solid advance of any branch of 

 knowledge must, in some way or other, and to a greater or 

 less degree, influence many others, even those not directly 

 connected with it, and therefore the rapid simultaneous strides 

 of so many branches of knowledge as may be embraced under 

 the term of " Recent Advances in Natural Science," will be 

 very likely to have some bearing upon theological beliefs. 

 Whether in the direction of expanding, improving, purifying, 

 elevating, or in the direction of contracting, hardening, and 

 destroying, depends not upon those engaged in contributing 

 to the advance of science, but upon those whose special duty 

 it is to show the bearing of these advances upon hitherto 

 received theological dogmas. The scientific questions them- 

 selves may well be left to experts. If the new doctrines are 

 not true, there are plenty of keen critics among men of science 

 ready to sift the sound from the unsound. Error in scientific 

 subjects has its day, but it is certain not long to survive the 

 ordeal, yearly increasing in severity, to which it is subjected 

 by those devoted to its cultivation. On the other hand, the 

 advances of truth,, though they may be retarded, will never 

 be stopped by the opposition of those who are incompetent 

 by the nature of their education to deal with the evidence on 

 which it rests. There is no position so dangerous to religion 

 as that which binds it up essentially with this or that 

 scientific doctrine, with which it must either stand or fall. 

 The history of the reception of the greatest discoveries in 

 Astronomy and Geology, the passionate clinging to the 

 exploded pseudo-scientific views on those subjects supposed to 

 be bound up with religious faith, the fierce denunciations of 

 the advocates of the then new, but now universally accepted 

 ideas, are well-worn subjects, and would not be alluded to but 

 for the repetition, almost literal repetition in some cases, of 



